The Jews in America Trilogy (98 page)

Often a flogging was so severe as to destroy the muscle tissue of a man's back and shoulders, thus making him unable to work and useless to the Navy. A captain was given great latitude in terms of meting out the penalty and, needless to say, the practice was often abused by sadistic commanders. It was prescribed for such misdeeds as “keeping low company”—a euphemism for drunkenness—for profanity, and “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.”
*
Flogging could also be ordered for such relatively minor offenses as “spitting in the deck,” or for “looking sullen.” There were also more severe punishments available. Keelhauling was still practiced in the Navy and, for the crime of murder, a man might be tied to the mouth of a cannon. Then the cannon was fired.

Uriah had been aboard the
United States
only a few
weeks when Captain Crane issued the order for all hands to appear on deck. A middle-aged gunner's mate had come back from shoreleave drunk, and had been noisy and abusive. Thirty lashes had been ordered, a relatively moderate sentence. Uriah now saw how, over the centuries, flogging had been perfected to the point where it was almost an art form of its own. The first few blows of the lash softened the muscles of the back. The fourth or fifth blow broke the skin. Then an expert with the lash could direct his blows so that they fell in a symmetrical crisscross pattern, so that the flesh of the back was cut in equal diamond-shaped pieces. An alternate stood by in case the first man wielding the lash grew tired. Also, several extra “cats” were provided so that when one of them grew too slippery from blood to be gripped, another could be substituted. Men had been known to remain standing through as many as sixty strokes of the lash, but the gunner's mate, not young, fainted several times during his ordeal, and was unconscious when it was over. He was at last cut down from the rack where he had been tied, spread-eagled, and pails of salt water were poured over his raw and bleeding flesh.

Uriah, sickened by the hideous spectacle, nonetheless forced himself to watch it, never once diverting his eyes. For weeks after the experience, he could talk of nothing else but the brutality of flogging as a punishment. This did little to further endear him to his fellow officers. Not only was he a Jew, but there was also something subversive about him. It was whispered that Uriah Levy disapproved of Navy discipline, but Uriah had found another crusade.

Uriah had been able to make only one friend on the ship, its executive officer, a young man named Thomas Catesby Jones, who had counseled him: “Do your duty as an officer and a gentleman. Be civil to all, and the first man who pursues a different course to you, call him to a strict and proper account.” It was good advice, but advice that was
difficult for Uriah to follow. One night, for example, when Uriah was standing watch on deck, he saw two young cabin boys dash up a companionway, pursued, it appeared, by a boatswain's mate named Porter, who held what looked like a whip in his hand. When Uriah halted Porter, and asked him why he was whipping the boys, Porter answered him in what Uriah considered an “insolent and mocking” tone. Uriah slapped Porter across the cheek with the back of his hand. Within an hour, Uriah was called before his superior officers and—in the presence of Porter—was asked to explain his actions. Uriah considered
this
a severe breach of Navy etiquette, and cried out, “Sir, I am not to be called to account in this way in front of a boatswain!” Warned that he was being disrespectful, Uriah replied, “And you, sir, are treating me in an equally disrespectful manner.” Uriah was then ordered to his cabin and warned, “You will hear more of this.” He did—his second court-martial, in which he was charged with disobedience of orders, contempt of a superior officer, and unofficerlike conduct. The president of the court-martial was Captain Crane, a circumstance not likely to benefit the defendant. He was found guilty on all three charges and sentenced to be “dismissed from the U.S.S. Frigate
United States
and not allowed to serve on board.”

Actually, such a sentence—over such a petty matter—was so unusual as to be considered irregular, and when the case was reviewed by the naval commander in chief, President James Monroe reversed the sentence. But when this news reached Uriah Levy he was already in trouble again over a matter that was, if anything, even more trifling. This time it was a rowboat. Lieutenant Levy had ordered a boat to row him ashore. Told that his boat was ready, he arrived on deck. When he was about to board the boat, another lieutenant, named Williamson, told him the boat was not his. Uriah insisted it was. Williamson repeated that it
wasn't. Presently both men were shouting epithets at each other, including “Liar!” “Scoundrel!” “Rascal!” “Coward!” and so on. In a rage, Uriah went back to his cabin and dashed off the following note to Williamson:

S
IR
:

The attack which you were pleased to make on my feelings this afternoon, in saying I prevaricated, thereby insulting me in the grossest manner without any cause on my part, demands that you should make such concessions as the case requires before these gentlemen in whose presence I was insulted—or to have a personal interview tomorrow morning at the Navy Yard, at which time, if you please, I expect a direct answer.

Uriah delivered the note to Williamson's cabin in person. The lieutenant flung the note, unread, in Uriah's face and slammed the door.

Brandishing his letter, Uriah went ashore that night, according to subsequent testimony, into “taverns and divers places,” reading the letter to anyone who would listen, giving a high-pitched account of the rowboat incident, and, in the process, he “wickedly and maliciously uttered and published false, slanderous, scandalous, and opprobrious words concerning Lt. Williamson, including poltroon, coward, and scoundrel, as well as rogue and rascal.” This was very bad Navy form. Lieutenant Williamson took action the following morning, and court-martial number three was under way. Uriah was charged with “using provoking and reproachful words, treating his superior officer with contempt, and teaching others who chose to learn from his example to make use of falsehood as an easy convenience, with scandalous conduct tending to the destruction of good morals, and attempting to leave the ship without permission from the officer of the deck.” These were much more serious charges than any that had been leveled against him before, and to these was added an even
graver one. He was accused of “being addicted to the vice of lying.”

For his defense, he turned to the only course that seemed open to him. He accused his fellow officers of anti-Semitism. At the end of his trial, he took the stand and said:

I am of the faith which has never been endured in Christendom 'til the Constitution of the United States raised us to a level with our fellow citizens of every religious denomination. I need not apprise you that I have been designated in the language of idle scorn “the Jew!” Perhaps I have been thus reproached by those who recognize neither the God of Moses nor of Christ. May I not say that I have been marked out to common contempt as a Jew until the slow unmoving finger of scorn has drawn a circle round me that includes all friendships and companions and attachments and all the blandishments of life and leaves me isolated and alone in the very midst of society.…

To be a Jew as the world now stands is an act of faith that no Christian martyrdom can exceed—for in every corner of the earth but one it consists in this, to be excluded from almost every advantage of society. Although the sufferers of my race have had the trust and confidence of all their Christian Revilers as their commercial agents throughout the world, they have been cut off from some of the most substantial benefits of the social company in Europe. They cannot inherit or devise at law, they could not 'til lately sit as jurors or testify as witnesses. They could not educate their children in their own faith. Children were encouraged to abandon their parents and their God, to rob a father of his estate—a rich Jewess might have been ravished or stolen and the law afforded no remedy—these heart-rending cruel distinctions have been gradually and imperceptibly worn down by the resistless current of time, but they have in no instance been voluntarily obliterated by an act of Christian charity.

But I beg to make the most solemn appeal to the pure and heavenly spirit of universal toleration that pervades the constitution of the United States in the presence of this court; whether before a court-martial in the American Navy, whoever may be the party arraigned, be he Jew or Gentile, Christian or pagan, shall
he not have the justice done him which forms the essential principle of the best maxim of all their code, “Do unto others as ye would have them do unto you.”

With its references to “the social company in Europe,” and to ravished Jewish maidens, Uriah's speech must have seemed completely beside the point. Though everything he said was true, and though his remarks reveal much of what he was feeling at the time, certainly none of this sank in with the officers of the court-martial. After all, in early-nineteenth-century America, the concept of anti-Semitism, or even of religious prejudice, was such an exotic one—so removed from what most Americans thought about and talked about and read about—that, to the judges hearing Uriah's case, a charge of prejudice seemed a non sequitur.

The court reached a quick and unanimous verdict: guilty. Uriah was sentenced “to be cashiered out of the Naval service of the United States.”

It was early spring, 1819. He was only twenty-seven years old, and his Navy career appeared ended. He entered a long period of funk, and for many months he disappeared from sight, refusing to go back to Philadelphia, where he would have to face his family, disgraced. For nearly two years he wandered about Europe. At one point, his widow wrote many years later, he lived in Paris, where “he met a lady of title in whom he became very much interested, and they were very much in love with each other. Lieutenant Levy would have married her, only she refused to return with him to America. But as his one ambition in life was to rise in the navy, he returned to his beloved country unmarried.”

He returned to America because an astonishing thing happened. It took twenty-three months for the court-martial proceedings to reach the President's desk for review, but when they did, Monroe once more reversed them, noting that: “Although Lieutenant Levy's conduct merited
censure, it is considered that his long suspension from the service has been a sufficient punishment for his offense. The sentence of the court is therefore disapproved, and he is returned to duty.”

Once again his honor had been satisfied. On the other hand, he found now that wherever he went his reputation as a hothead had preceded him, and that now he was
expected
to throw tantrums and slap senior officers with gloves. Instead of becoming the conscience of American Jews, the “terrible-tempered Lieutenant Levy” was becoming something of a legendary Navy figure. Uriah found himself good-naturedly teased and goaded about his dueling and multiple courts-martial, and egged into arguments. And so, not surprisingly, it wasn't long before he erupted again.

This time his adversary was a lieutenant named William Weaver. In the presence of one of Uriah's friends, Weaver had called Uriah a “great scoundrel” and a “thoroughgoing rascal.” His friend reported these slurs to Uriah, who was typically enraged and who immediately dashed off one of his indignant letters to Weaver. The letter was not answered. A few days later, however, an article, heavy with suggestive italics, appeared in a Washington newspaper:

If convicted of charges proved, the leniency of naval courts-martial has become proverbial—so that the sitting of a court-martial generally eventuates in a reprimand. If, however, and what is very common, the guilty officer should be
cashiered,
as in a recent
case,
he sets himself to work with
political friends of his tribe,
and loaded with papers, presents himself at Washington, the strong arm of the executive is palsied.
He dare not approve the justly merited sentence
; the culprit is retained.

The allusion was obviously to Uriah. The article was unsigned, but Uriah was able to discover that its author was Weaver.

Uriah's first assignment on being reinstated was to the
Spark,
on duty in the Mediterranean. He boarded the
Spark
in June, 1821, and remained aboard her until the following March, when the ship docked at Charleston, South Carolina. In those intervening months, it seemed, Uriah had done nothing but vilify the character of Lieutenant Weaver, making, to anyone who would listen, such comments as: “Weaver is a coward, a damned rascal, a scoundrel and no gentleman,” “Weaver is an errant bastard,” and “If I ever run into the damned rascal, I'll tweak his nose.” These remarks had made their way to Weaver, now stationed at the Charleston Naval Yard. Uriah, upon debarking, was met with a summons to a court-martial, his fourth, charged with “scandalous conduct—using provoking reproachful words—ungentlemanly conduct—forgery and falsification.”

Forgery, of course, was a new charge. It related to the fact that Uriah had carried around a copy of his indignant note to Weaver, with its challenging accusations, had shown the note to many people, whereas Weaver now maintained that he had never received the note, and that it was a forgery. The court found Uriah guilty of scandalous conduct, and noted that “he did suffer others to read a note purporting to be a challenge.” The other charges were dropped. The court ordered that Uriah be “publically reprimanded.” But the court also scolded Lieutenant Weaver. “The court,” the judges wrote, “in passing this sentence, cannot, however, forbear expressing their disapprobation of the behavior of the prosecutor toward the prisoner in so far as the circumstances thereof have come before them in evidence.” So Uriah's court-martial number four ended more or less in a draw. But it began to seem as though sooner or later either he or the United States Navy would have to change its ways.